Research

Research News

Oakland University’s popular Soundings Series will return on Wednesday, March 7 with a hands-on writing workshop led by three successful and publicly engaged OU faculty members who will be sharing tips and tricks for crafting Tweets, composing short pieces for blogs and creating soundbites about your work.

The asset management industry directs the investment of $71 trillion worldwide. By 2020, managing other people’s money is projected to become a $100-trillion business. But who is managing the managers?

Once the domain of a company’s production/operations department, environmental awareness has steadily expanded to include functions across the entire organization. Over the last three decades, Earth-friendly actions have evolved from recycling and sourcing materials that use recycled content to incorporating sustainability considerations into products and services.

Oakland University will welcome 30 prestigious scholars to campus this year as part of a new PI Academy mentoring program that pairs OU junior faculty with top professors from universities across the nation.

The Mobilization Zone (MZ) of Oakland University’s Research Office offers several opportunities for local, high-tech startup companies, including two programs sponsored by the Michigan Corporate Relations Network — the Small Company Innovation Program (SCIP) and the Small Company Internship Award (SCIA) program.

For nearly a year, the founders of the Soul Food concert series — Mark Stone, associate professor of music at Oakland University, and Dwayne Anthony, community relations specialist and arts commissioner for the city of Pontiac — have been bringing their message of peace and unity through music to the Oakland County community.

The Oakland University chapter of Sigma Xi recently achieved a third place ranking after competing with more than 500 chapters in the United States and abroad for the Sigma Xi Chapter Excellence Award, which is presented to chapters that have demonstrated exceptional innovation and quality in their overall annual programming.

Oakland University’s (OU) Research Office and the School of Business Administration (SBA) have recently launched the Ideas 2 Business (I2B) program, a real-world, project-based experience connecting students with local businesses.

Jim Smith, president of the American Society of Safety Engineers, and Dr. Darryl Hill, past president of the ASSE, visited Oakland University on Thursday, Oct. 5 to recognize the university’s Environmental Health & Safety Program, and to present awards to EHS alumni Mary Asher and Erika Cleary, who were recognized for outstanding undergraduate research.

Scholars who are searching for ways to effectively market their own research, ideas and conversations to a broader community will want to plan on attending “Social Media Strategies for Scholars,” an upcoming “Soundings Series” event at Oakland University.

The genetic information in a kernel of corn could be a key to better understanding how normal cells become cancerous in humans, according to a recent collaborative study conducted by researchers from Oakland University and the University of Florida.

Dr. Randal Westrick, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Oakland University, is using a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and a $150,000 grant from American Heart Association to help identify genes that decrease susceptibility to blood clotting in mice, and to explore whether those genes could one day lead to therapies designed to prevent life-threatening blood clots in human beings.

Sheldon R. Gordon, Ph.D., a professor in the department of Biological Sciences, has been awarded a $15,000 Eye and Vision Research grant by Eversight, a global nonprofit network of eye banks. The grant was awarded in support of his work in the area of corneal research.

Dr. Andrei Slavin, a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Physics at Oakland University, has been awarded a $210,829 grant from the National Science Foundation as part of a collaborative research project which seeks to develop a new type of terahertz generator that can be used in a variety of fields, including communication, medical imaging and security.

Each year, at least 2 million people in the United States become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of those infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A research poster presented by Oakland University undergraduates Erika Cleary and Mary Asher was awarded the grand prize by the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) at the Safety 2017 Professional Development Conference and Exposition, held June 19-22 in Denver, Colorado.

For the third time in less than a year, Oakland University Psychology Professor Martha Escobar has received a research grant from the National Science Foundation in support of her collaborative efforts with Tuskegee University in Alabama to increase participation by minority students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) related fields.

Dr. Thomas Raffel, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Oakland University, has been awarded a five-year grant totaling nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation for his research on the effects of temperature variation on chytridiomycosis, an infectious disease that has been linked to mass amphibian die-offs and extinctions throughout the world.

The development of advanced noninvasive techniques is a critical next step toward the continued progress of precision medicine initiatives. While saliva collection has already been in use as a medium for the collection DNA in forensic and genetic testing, could your spit provide clues to the future of brain health?

Ahmad Mansour, a Computer Science and Informatics Ph.D. candidate at Oakland University, recently won the award for Best Full Paper at the 12th annual Cyber and Information Security Research Conference held at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

The Meeting of Minds Undergraduate Research Conference will take place on Friday, May 12 on OU’s campus.The Meeting of Minds Undergraduate Research Conference, which invites students from Oakland University, the University of Michigan-Flint and the University of Michigan-Dearborn to present the results of their scholarly and creative endeavors through oral or poster presentations, will take place on Friday, May 12 on OU’s campus.

Oakland University honored more than 30 faculty members for their scholarly achievements, dedication, path-breaking discoveries in research and critical teaching roles in educating the leaders of tomorrow during its 22nd Annual Faculty Recognition Luncheon on Wednesday, April 19.

The Research Office is inviting all Oakland University faculty and alumni, as well as the general public, to attend “No Guts, No Glory,” an upcoming “Soundings Series” event featuring Dr. Tamara Hew-Butler.

Oakland University is working to bridge the gap between industry’s need for work-ready, highly skilled engineers and the availability of graduate and undergraduate students who identify engineering as a career path of choice.

As part of a collaborative research project, Oakland University and Tuskegee University in Alabama have been awarded $894,655 by the National Science Foundation in order to encourage high school students from underrepresented minority groups to pursue degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) related fields.

Katie Aleck, an undergraduate student at Oakland University whose research into the potential health risks of chemical compound Bisphenol-S (BPS) could contribute to understanding the effects of endocrine or hormone disrupting compounds on breast cancer treatment and prevention, has been selected to make an oral presentation on April 1 at the ENDO 2017 conference in Orlando, Fla.

The work of nearly 50 Oakland University researchers was showcased March 10 at the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters (MASAL). This year’s conference was organized by Western Michigan University and featured the work of 520 researchers.

You can combine two or three molecules in thousands of ways. Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry Nessan Kerrigan, Ph.D., matches up molecules, identifying which combinations are most interesting, useful or profitable — particularly for pharmaceuticals.

An Oakland University study on the effects of preventative, home-based physical therapy on senior citizens has been selected to receive a $23,300 Health Innovation Grant by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).

Two Oakland University employees have been named to the Oakland County Executive’s Elite 40 Under 40 Class of 2017. The program honors exceptional individuals, under the age of 40, who excel in their field and improve the quality of life in Oakland County. Alex Delavan, director of Sponsored Programs, and Shaun Moore, director of e-Learning, are being recognized for outstanding career achievements and community contributions.

Leaders from Oakland University and surrounding communities gathered in the Kresge Library’s Nyberg Room on Thursday, Jan. 12 to celebrate the formal opening of the Michael J. Rogers Congressional Collection at OU. Rogers, who served as a state senator before embarking on a 14-year career in the U.S. House of Representatives, was also in attendance as the collection was officially made available to the public.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Fabia Battistuzzi, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Biological Sciences at Oakland University, a $417,286 grant that will allow her to examine the evolution of infectious diseases while laying the groundwork for the development of new drug-based treatments that could help to save thousands of lives.

In an article published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, Oakland University Assistant Professor of Psychology Matthew J. W. McLarnon, Ph.D., and colleagues, addressed the question of “How important is personality in the selection of medical students?”

Omari Garrett, a senior at Detroit Edison Public School Academy (DEPSA) was selected from a group of 60 Michigan high school seniors to participate in the 2016 World Food Prize Summit during the Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium in Des Moines, IA in October 2016.

Mary Jamieson, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biological sciences at Oakland University, has been selected as a recipient of the inaugural New Innovators in Food and Agriculture Research Award by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research for her efforts to investigate beneficial insects and the ecosystem services that they provide in urban agriculture.